Nice to see Matteau and Santini each earn an assist and get some praise on twitter. Hopefully Matteau is ok, there hasn't been an update on his injury yet. Cuts are coming tomorrow morning and I imagine both players would make it (assuming Matteau's healthy, maybe they'll shut him down though). There is always the December camp to earn a spot.

Matteau had to leave the game after taking a high hit from Anton Lindholm, who was ejected from the game. Matteau’s injury came at a really bad time as I think he was finally starting to show glimpses of his ability. Matteau has been very average so far and inconsistent. He hasn’t taken any bad penalties, though, which was a big concern with him. Hopefully the injury is not too serious because I think he needs a longer look in camp.

Among defensive defensemen, Santini has really stood out and did so again today. He doesn’t have much offense, but he was so sound at the back end. That freed up Matt Grzelcyk to do a little more offensively without much concern. His skating is top notch and his positioning on the big ice is really solid.

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RIP Pat Burns -- RIP Alexander Vasyunov and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl
Winner of the 2008 Sergei Brylin Award for Most Underrated Poster
Co-Winner of the 2011 Scott Bertoli Award for Best Minor League Poster, Winner of the 2012 Scott Bertoli Award

Matteau was LW on a line with C Boo Nieves (NYR) and RW Adam Erne (TB) with C Zach Stepan (NSH) rotating in. His 2nd penalty led to a Sweden PPG. Penalties were the reason why Matteau was the final forward cut from last year's team. Sounds like he's had 2 shaky games and 1 good game so far. Still, players will be evaluated through the 1st half of the season, with some getting a chance in December camp, so don't write him off just yet.

Santini was partnered with Ian McCoshen (FLA) today. Santini's penalty led to a Sweden PPG.

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RIP Pat Burns -- RIP Alexander Vasyunov and Lokomotiv Yaroslavl
Winner of the 2008 Sergei Brylin Award for Most Underrated Poster
Co-Winner of the 2011 Scott Bertoli Award for Best Minor League Poster, Winner of the 2012 Scott Bertoli Award

The thing about Matteau is even if he makes the team, I'm not convinced NJ would be in a position to let him go, unless he ended up in juniors this year. If he's in the AHL, the U20s are worse competition, on different ice, and he's probably 6th on NJ's LW depth chart - seems like it'd be tough for him to be let out.

Man, this McDavid kid sure seems like the real deal. It'll be exciting to find out who gets the first overall pick in 2015.

Also, people can't say enough good things about Teuvo Teravainen. I'm anxious to see this kid in the NHL. Hopefully the Devils can get a high end offensive prospect like that in the next few years. They may need to find a way to pull a Erat-Forsberg trade like the Predators did last season.

Really happy with what I'm hearing about both Severson and Santini. The Devils' D will look great in a few years if these two continue to mature so well.

There's two sides to deals like the Erat-Forsberg trade. 1st round picks who get traded early on in their career don't have a great history. Now people will point to trades like McDonagh for Gomez, but there's also trades like Jack Johnson for Belanger/Gleason, a deal which looked insane at the time, but probably turned out in Carolina's favor. (Never mind that Johnson + 1st turned into Jeff Carter - Johnson was atrocious as a King).

Forsberg should've ruined the Swedish 2nd league this year - there isn't a huge history with players from that league, but Patrik Berglund, despite missing 10 games, managed to be 5th in points there in his draft + 1 year. Forsberg had good results but was not crushing the league. I don't know what soured the Capitals on Forsberg, and indeed sourings like that can be stupid, but the Capitals *should* know more about Forsberg than anyone else.

There's two sides to deals like the Erat-Forsberg trade. 1st round picks who get traded early on in their career don't have a great history. Now people will point to trades like McDonagh for Gomez, but there's also trades like Jack Johnson for Belanger/Gleason, a deal which looked insane at the time, but probably turned out in Carolina's favor. (Never mind that Johnson + 1st turned into Jeff Carter - Johnson was atrocious as a King).

Forsberg should've ruined the Swedish 2nd league this year - there isn't a huge history with players from that league, but Patrik Berglund, despite missing 10 games, managed to be 5th in points there in his draft + 1 year. Forsberg had good results but was not crushing the league. I don't know what soured the Capitals on Forsberg, and indeed sourings like that can be stupid, but the Capitals *should* know more about Forsberg than anyone else.

I think those trades are kind of rare... a first round top prospect being traded so soon after he's been drafted. So I don't see much of a history to go on, one way or another, unless there are other examples I can't think of. I'm not sure if Niedereitter for Clutterback counts.

Re Forsberg particularly, there's something to be said for the fact that he slipped far compared to where some projections had him.

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There's two sides to deals like the Erat-Forsberg trade. 1st round picks who get traded early on in their career don't have a great history. Now people will point to trades like McDonagh for Gomez, but there's also trades like Jack Johnson for Belanger/Gleason, a deal which looked insane at the time, but probably turned out in Carolina's favor. (Never mind that Johnson + 1st turned into Jeff Carter - Johnson was atrocious as a King).

Forsberg should've ruined the Swedish 2nd league this year - there isn't a huge history with players from that league, but Patrik Berglund, despite missing 10 games, managed to be 5th in points there in his draft + 1 year. Forsberg had good results but was not crushing the league. I don't know what soured the Capitals on Forsberg, and indeed sourings like that can be stupid, but the Capitals *should* know more about Forsberg than anyone else.

I would've understood them trading him, prospects flame out all the time, but I just feel like with their prospects, they could've packaged him for something better than Martin Erat in the offseason or even then I dunno

Still, though, would you already be willing to give up on the best non-Yakupov forward prospect in the entire draft class for Martin Erat after less than one year?

Also, Berglund did fall out of that top 5 the following year, though not by much. And even when he returned to the same team during the lockout, I'm not sure you could say he was ruining the league - and that's years after he had already become an NHL player. Plus, you've got to remember that Forsberg is very young for his year. He's still 18 (though for only 2 more days). None of this really makes a case for Forsberg projecting to be a solid NHL player, but it could be that Berglund was just a lot more mature physically at a younger age, and was able to hold his own better with a bigger frame while playing against men at the ages of 17-19. It's pretty rare to see Swedish prospects perform well in the pro Swedish leagues before entering the NHL these days, anyway. So it is quite hard to tell how he will develop.

But either way, I see your point. A guy like Elias Lindholm is the 4th forward drafted the following year, and put up comparable numbers in the SHL the year he was drafted to Filip Forsberg's stats in his year +1 in Allsvenskan.

Forsberg should've ruined the Swedish 2nd league this year - there isn't a huge history with players from that league, but Patrik Berglund, despite missing 10 games, managed to be 5th in points there in his draft + 1 year. Forsberg had good results but was not crushing the league. I don't know what soured the Capitals on Forsberg, and indeed sourings like that can be stupid, but the Capitals *should* know more about Forsberg than anyone else.

Forsberg would've played SEL hockey had he stayed - Leksand moved up to the top division.

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Still, though, would you already be willing to give up on the best non-Yakupov forward prospect in the entire draft class for Martin Erat after less than one year?

Also, Berglund did fall out of that top 5 the following year, though not by much. And even when he returned to the same team during the lockout, I'm not sure you could say he was ruining the league - and that's years after he had already become an NHL player. Plus, you've got to remember that Forsberg is very young for his year. He's still 18 (though for only 2 more days). None of this really makes a case for Forsberg projecting to be a solid NHL player, but it could be that Berglund was just a lot more mature physically at a younger age, and was able to hold his own better with a bigger frame while playing against men at the ages of 17-19. It's pretty rare to see Swedish prospects perform well in the pro Swedish leagues before entering the NHL these days, anyway. So it is quite hard to tell how he will develop.

But either way, I see your point. A guy like Elias Lindholm is the 4th forward drafted the following year, and put up comparable numbers in the SHL the year he was drafted to Filip Forsberg's stats in his year +1 in Allsvenskan.

I don't like trading for just Erat - had they gotten a 2nd rounder along with it, it'd be more justifiable.

FWIW, and I do hate 1 to 1 comparisons, Berglund wasn't old for his year either.

It's hard to shop around a prospect because eventually people are going to figure out that you're not too happy with him. I don't really care if he's the best non-Yakupov forward prospect - first off that's not true, Galcheynuk is really good, Terivainen just had a great Ivan Hlinka, Grigorenko looks to be pretty impressive, etc. - it's a question of how good an NHLer is he going to be?